Robert Drew Hicks

“ Reading the Ephesian doctrine with the eyes of a Cynic, and the Cynic ethics in the light of Heracliteanism, he came to formulate his distinctive theory of the universe far in advance of either. In taking this immense stride and identifying the Cynic “reason,” which is a law for man, with the “reason” which is the law of the universe, Zeno has been compared with Plato, who similarly extended the Socratic “general notion” from the region of morals—of justice, temperance, virtue—to embrace all objects of all thought, the verity of all things that are. ”

“ So long as dialectic subtleties and exciting polemics afforded food for the intellect, the gulf between theory and practice might be ignored. But once let this system be presented to men in earnest about right living, and eager to profit by what they are taught, and an ethical reform is inevitable. Conduct for us will be separated from conduct for the sage. We shall be told not always to imitate him. There will be a new law, dwelling specially upon the “external duties” required of all men, wise or unwise; and even the sufficiency of virtue for our happiness may be questioned. ”

“ The relation of the soul of the universe to God is quite clear: it is an inherent property, a mode of His activity, an effluence or emanation from the fiery ether which surrounds the universe, penetrating and permeating it. A Stoic might consistently maintain that World-Soul, Providence, Destiny and Germinal Reason are not mere synonyms, for they express different aspects of God, different relations of God to things. We find ourselves on the verge of a system of abstractions, or “attributes turned into entities,” as barren as any excogitated in medieval times. ”

“ Virtue is its own good; the highest exercise of reason is its own perfection. It follows (1) that pleasure, being quite outside the pale is not the object but merely an ἐπιγέννημα (accompaniment) of virtuous action, and (2) that there is, within the circle of virtue, no degree. An action is simply virtuous or not; it cannot be more or less virtuous. The result of this theory of ethics is of great value as emphasizing the importance of a systematic view of conduct, but it fails to resolve satisfactorily the great Socratic paradox that evil is the result of ignorance. ”

“ The opposite tendencies, to allow to the individual responsibility and freedom, and to demand of him obedience to law, are both features of the system; but in virtue even of the freedom which belongs to him rational, he must recognize the society of rational beings of which he is a member, and subordinate his own ends to the ends and needs of this society. Those who own one law are citizens of one state, the city of Zeus, in which men and gods have their dwelling. In that city all is ordained by reason working intelligently, and the members exist for the sake of one another ”

“ Finally, the same cause, a relaxation of tension, accounts for sleep, decay and death of man and for the dissolution of the world; after death the disembodied soul can only maintain its separate existence, even for a limited time, by mounting to that region of the universe which is akin to its nature. It was a moot point whether all souls so survive, as Cleanthes thought, or the souls of the wise and good alone, which was the opinion of Chrysippus; in any case, sooner or later individual souls are merged in the soul of the universe, from which they proceeded. ”

“ Other peculiarities of the later Stoic ethics are due to the condition of the times. In a time of moral corruption and oppressive rule, as the early empire repeatedly became to the privileged classes of Roman society, a general feeling of insecurity led the student of philosophy to seek in it a refuge against the vicissitudes of fortune which he daily beheld. The less any one man could do to interfere in the government, or even to safeguard his own life and property, the more heavily the common fate pressed upon all, levelling the ordinary distinctions of class and character. ”

“ God is best worshipped in the shrine of the heart by the desire to know and obey Him. At the same time the Stoics felt at liberty to defend and uphold the truth in polytheism. Not only is the primitive substance God, the one supreme being, but divinity must be ascribed to His manifestations—to the heavenly bodies, which are conceived, like Plato's created gods, as the highest of rational beings, to the forces of nature, even to deified men ”

“ Seneca gives the true Stoic answer in his treatise On Providence: the wise man cannot really meet with misfortune; all outward calamity is a divine instrument of training, designed to exercise his powers and teach the world the indifference of external conditions. In the soul Seneca recognizes an effluence of the divine spirit, a god in the human frame; in virtue of this he maintains the essential dignity and internal freedom of man in every human being. ”

“ The special objects of attack were the Stoic theory of knowledge, their theology and their ethics. The physical basis of the system remained unchanged but neglected; all creative force or even original research in the departments of physics and metaphysics vanished. Yet problems of interest bearing upon psychology and natural theology continued to be discussed. Thus the cycles of the world's existence, and the universal conflagration which terminates each of them, excited some doubt. ”

“ Incidentally we meet there with the doctrines of Pneuma and of tension, of the corporeal nature of the virtues and the affections, and much more to the same effect. But his attention is claimed for physics chiefly as a means of elevating the mind, and as making known the wisdom of Providence and the moral government of the world. To reconcile the ways of God to man had been the ambition of Chrysippus, as we know from Plutarch's criticisms. He argued plausibly that natural evil was a thing indifferent—that even moral evil was required in the divine economy as a foil to set off good. ”

“ Nay, thou knowest how to make even the rough smooth, and to bring order out of disorder; and things not friendly are friendly in thy sight. For so hast thou fitted all things together, the good with the evil, that there might be one eternal law over all. ”

“ From Seneca we turn, not without satisfaction, to men of sterner mould, such as Musonius Rufus, who certainly deserves Musonius a place beside his more illustrious disciple, Epictetus. As a teacher he commanded universal respect, and wherever we catch a glimpse of his activity he appears to advantage. His philosophy, however, is yet more concentrated upon practice than Seneca's, and in ethics he is almost at the position of Aristo. Epictetus testifies to the powerful hold he acquired upon his pupils, each of whom felt that Musonius spoke to his heart. ”

“ Sometimes, too, he writes as if he accepted an irrational as well as a rational part of the soul. In ethics, if there is no novelty of doctrine, there is a surprising change in the mode of its application. The ideal sage has receded; philosophy comes as a physician, not to the whole but to the sick. We learn that there are various classes of patients in “progress” (προκοπή) , i.e. on their way to virtue, making painful efforts towards it. The first stage is the eradication of vicious habits: evil tendencies are to be corrected, and a guard kept on the corrupt propensities of the reason. ”

“ We learn that he regards the δαίμων or “guardian angel” as the divine part in each man; sometimes it is more nearly conscience, at other times reason. His ethics, too, have a religious character. He begins with human weakness and man's need of God: whoso would become good must first be convinced that he is evil. Submission is enforced by an argument which almost amounts to a retractation of the difference between things natural and things contrary to nature, as understood by Zeno. Would you be cut off from the universe? ”

“ In the rational creatures—man and the gods—Pneuma is manifested in a high degree of purity and intensity as an emanation from the world-soul, itself an emanation from the primary substance of purest ether—a spark of the celestial fire, or, more accurately, fiery breath, which is a mean between fire and air, characterized by vital warmth more than by dryness. ”

“ From the astronomers the Stoics borrowed their picture of the universe—a plenum in the form of a series of layers or concentric rings, first the elements, then the planetary and stellar spheres, massed round the earth as centre—a picture which dominated the imagination of men from the days of Eudoxus down to those of Dante or even Copernicus. ”

“ In short, Chrysippus made the Stoic system what it was, and as he left it we proceed to describe it.
And first we will inquire, What is philosophy? No idle gratification of curiosity, as Aristotle fabled of his life intellectualConception of Philosophy. (which would be but a disguise for refined pleasure) , no theory divorced from practice, no pursuit of science for its own sake, but knowledge so far forth as it can be realized in virtuous action, the learning of virtue by exercise and effort and training. ”

“ Here the work of reason is assimilated to the force which binds together the parts of an inorganic body and resists their separation. There is nothing more in the order of the universe than extended mobile bodies and forces in tension in these bodies. So, too, in the order of knowledge there is nothing but sense and the force of reason maintaining its tension and connecting sensations and ideas in their proper sequence. Zeno compared sensation to the outstretched hand, flat and open ”

“ Nor, again, is there any analogy to the peculiar Stoic doctrine of universal intermingling (κρᾶσις δὶ ὅλου) . The two active elements interpenetrate the two lower or more relaxed, winding through all parts of matter and so pervading the greater masses that there is no mechanical mixture, nor yet a chemical combination, since both “force” and “matter” retain their relative characters as before. Even the distinction between “force” and “matter”—so alien to the spirit of Heraclitus—is seen to be a necessary consequence. ”

“ Of the three divisions logic is the least important; ethics is the outcome of the whole, and historically the all-important vital element; but the foundations of the whole system are best discerned in the science of nature, which deals pre-eminently with the macrocosm and the microcosm, the universe and man, including natural theology and an anthropology or psychology, the latter forming the direct introduction to ethics. ”

“ Now, to the Stoics nothing passes unexplained; there is a reason (λόγος) for everything in nature. Everything which exists is at once capable of acting and being acted upon. In everything that exists, therefore, even the smallest particle, there are these two principles. By virtue of the passive principle the thing is susceptible of motion and modification; it is matter which determines substance (oὐσία) . The active principle makes the matter a given determinate thing, characterizing and qualifying it, whence it is termed quality (ποιότης) . ”

“ Driven inwards upon themselves, they employed their energy in severe self-examination, or they cultivated resignation to the will of the universe, and towards their fellow men forbearance and forgiveness and humility, the virtues of the philanthropic disposition. With Seneca this resignation took the form of a constant meditation upon death. Timid by nature, aware of his impending doom, and at times justly dissatisfied with himself, he tries all means of reconciling himself to the idea of suicide. ”

“ The most elementary part of nature is pure ether, which is possessed of divine reason. This Reason even non-rational man unconsciously manifests in his mechanical or instinctive actions which tend to the preservation of himself. The truly wise man will therefore live as much as possible in conformity with nature, (i.e. nature uncorrupted by the errors of society) , and, though as an individual and part of the whole not master of his fate, will yet have self-control even in the midst of misfortune and pain. ”

“ The illustration is valuable for the light it throws on the essential unity of diverse intellectual operations as well as for enforcing once more the Stoic doctrine that different grades of knowledge are different grades of tension. Good and evil, virtues and vices, remarks Plutarch, are all capable of being “perceived”; sense, this common basis of all mental activity, is a sort of touch by which the ethereal Pneuma which is the soul's substance recognizes and measures tension. ”

“ The physical basis of Stoic psychology deserves the closest attention. On the one hand, soul is corporeal, else it would have no real existence, would be incapable of extension in three dimensions (and therefore of equable diffusion all over the body) , incapable of holding the body together, as the Stoics contended that it does, herein presenting a sharp contrast to the Epicurean tenet that it is the body which confines and shelters the light vagrant atoms of soul. On the other hand, this corporeal thing is veritably and identically reason, mind, and ruling principle (λόγος, νοῦς, ἡγεμονικόν) ”

“ What God is for the world that the soul is for man. The Cosmos must be conceived as a single whole, its variety being referred to varying stages of condensation in Pneuma. So, too, the human soul must possess absolute simplicity, its varying functions being conditioned by the degrees or species of its tension. ”

“ In plants again and all the vegetable kingdom it is manifest as something far purer and possessing greater tension, called a “nature,” or principle of growth (φύσις) . Further, a distinction was drawn between irrational animals, or the brute creation, and the rational, i.e. gods and men, leaving room for a divergence, or rather development, of Stoic opinion. The older authorities conceded a vital principle, but denied a soul, to the brutes: animals, they say, are ζῶα but not ἔμψυχα. ”